


Career Mobility

by nnozomi



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: "After the War" very broadly interpreted, Crack Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 14:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17285888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: There are many options in life, even if being an architect didn't work out.





	Career Mobility

**Author's Note:**

> This silly bit of nothing is probably incomprehensible if you're not somewhat familiar with both fandoms; sorry. It occurred to me that Rowan Marlow and Peter Grant had something in common, and I went from there.

“You’re doing _what_?” said all her family, jointly and severally, in assorted tones of dismay; except for Ann, who said “Oh, but that’s a _marvelous_ idea,” and Peter, who said “Going into partnership with young Tom Catchpole, are you now?”

Even with the new farm manager well established, all the paperwork signed in triplicate, and the uniform delivered, Rowan didn’t actually believe it herself until her first day at Hendon. After that it turned out to be a long string of things she was good at; and if some of the things she ran up against as a newly minted Police Constable were nothing that Kingscote and farm living had prepared her for, well, better late than never.

It was not long before her official posting date that she was having a pint in the pub after work with three blokes and another girl from the station, discussing in a desultory way the paths that had led them into the fuzz. Rowan detailed briefly her past ambitions, as a way to avoid dwelling too much on the family complications attendant on Trennels.

“Oh! I know another cop who said he would have been an architect if he could,” said Sarah Fenton cheerfully. “Peter Grant. We went through Hendon together, but he does weird stuff now. You ought to meet him.”

“Weird stuff?” Rowan repeated dubiously.

“Weird stuff. I don’t know. There are all kinds of rumors, but—He works with this _dreamy_ Chief Inspector, it’s just the two of them in the unit—“

“I heard they catch aliens,” Marek Kozlowski offered.

“Are you even allowed to believe in aliens? You’re the one who gave up the priesthood for the police.”

Marek looked offended. “There could be Catholic aliens,” he began huffily, and the conversation veered off in a whole other direction.

Rowan saw Sarah’s friend for the first time two weeks later, when he lit her way through an abandoned squat with a light that she was clearly aware came from no battery or generator. “Can you tell me how you’re doing that, please,” she said, once they were back on the doorstep.

He squinted at her in the ordinary streetlighting. “Didn’t catch your name, sorry?”

“PC Marlow,” she said. “Rowan.”

“DC Peter Grant. Good to meet you.” He stuck out a hand and she shook it. “How I was doing that?” he said. “You know—one of those chemical lights—“

“No, honestly, that is not what you were doing,” Rowan assured him. “Chemical lights don’t usually smell of fried bananas—or those bigger bananas, what are they called?”

“Plantains,” Grant said automatically, looking at her again, this time very much more closely. “Have we met before?”

“No, though we’ve got friends in common—Sarah up at Golders Green station for one.” Rowan was readjusting her ideas of _weird stuff_ as she spoke. “She told me—“

“What?” Grant was frowning; Rowan had been the fuzz just long enough to recognize the look of a rapidly fermenting alibi.

“She told me,” she said, instead of anything about weird stuff, “that you’d wanted to be an architect. So did I.”

Peter Grant’s alibiferous expression dissolved into a broad grin. “Did you? What stopped you then?”

“I couldn’t draw,” Rowan said, omitting—again—Jon and Trennels and everything else. “What about you?”

“That’s a long story…Look.” Grant gestured at the unpromising flat they had just emerged from. “It’s pretty clear there’s not much to find here, for your shout or mine. We’ve got to report back in, but once they let us loose, would you like to come and see my nick? It’s quite a piece of architecture in itself, and I have a feeling my guv’nor would like to meet you also.”

Rowan contemplated him. “Am I going to find out more about the chemical lights that aren’t chemical?”

Peter Grant’s grin turned from pleased to more than a little wicked, reminding her suddenly of Peter her brother, when he’d just discovered a really delightful tease. “You might that. It might change your life, are you ready for that?”

“What, again? Always,” said Rowan, and meant every word of it.

 


End file.
